Older adults who are far too eager to be involved in their grown children's lives, give them advice on how they should live, etc. Often they will try to take care of their child's problems for them, especially when it comes to educational opportunities and advancement. In most cases, their efforts may be more detrimental to their child than beneficial in the long run. They view this as "helping" and can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want help and become offended if their help is rejected. May be especially critical of their son-in-law/daughter-in-law.

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In real life, parents can act like this as well, making this trope an example of Truth in Television. These parents are called "helicopter parents" due to their tendency to "hover" over their children and are the bane of every teacher and admissions officer on the planet. A lesser-known but equally appropriate term is "curling parents", due to their habit of "sweeping" any obstacles in front of their children. Helicopter parents can effectively be put in these categories:

The Agent, aka The JetRanger : Having an Agent helicopter parent is like having Max Clifford working for you round the clock—for free. They operate like a footballer's agent: fixing deals, arranging contracts, smoothing out local difficulties. It's the Agent's job to represent his or her client at events which, for whatever reason, the client feels are simply too tedious to attend. Specializes in nimble, agile bargains and deals.

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The Banker, aka The Halo: Accessible online, face-to-face or via a personal hotline, the Banker is unique in the world of financial services for charging no APR, asking few if any questions, expecting no collateral, and being psychologically inclined to say "yes" no matter how illogical or poorly articulated the request. The Banker is also resigned to never seeing loans repaid. That's assuming they don't just do the shopping directly, and just show up with the gear.

The White Knight, aka The Dolphin: Imbued with an almost semi-mythical status, the White Knight parent appears at little to no notice to resolve awkward situations. Once resolved, the White Knight will fade anonymously into the background. Intervention is accomplished silently and with minimum fuss.

The Bodyguard, aka The Hind: The primary function of the Bodyguard is to protect the client from a range of embarrassing social situations - such as cancelling appointments and soaking up complaints on behalf of their client. Particularly skilled in constructing elaborate excuses. When not protecting life, limb, and reputation, doubles up as a chauffeur and personal assistant.

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The Black Hawk: Named after the military helicopter that specializes in clearing the way for delivering elite troops. Dreaded by teachers and educational administrators (Especially the sadistic ones), the Black Hawk is unique among helicopter parents due to their willingness to go to any lengths - legal or illegal - to give their offspring a positional advantage over any competition. Particularly lethal when elected to parent-teacher associations. Lack of a civilian name emphasizes their warlike nature: always on the attack.

Sometimes a biological parent will abandon their kid (see Parental Abandonment) only to try to intrude into the kid's life years later (without intention or ability of actually taking good care of the kid) after a conscientious and loving parental substitute has already formed a bond with the kid. Examples: Look Who's Talking and A Place For Annie. In film, the bad biological parent is often readily identifiable either by (1) stubborn insistence on chain-smoking cigarettes around her toddler-aged child, (2) responding to any advice or concerns about parenting techniques with "it's my kid; don't tell me what to do!" and/or (3) total indifference toward spending any considerable amount of time actually interacting with the kid, much less taking on the "less fun" responsibilities of childcare (changing diapers, etc.). It is then the parental substitute's job to angrily school him on how what he's doing is only going to hurt the child.

Examples

In August Rush Lyla's father is so obsessed with making sure she is a successful violinist that he intentionally separated her from her son by forging her name on the adoption certificate and told her that the baby died. He does redeem himself by telling her eventually what he had done although he kept the secret for 11 years, making him a classic "Black Hawk" parent.

Neil Perry's stern authoritarian father can be considered a Black Hawk version in Dead Poets Society when he has a parent-teacher conference with Headmaster Nolan, who decides, at Mr. Perry's consultation, to discontinue Neil's participation on the yearbook staff so he can become a successful doctor, and forbidding him to voice his objections, and even forcibly withdrawing Neil after he participates in the play, enrolling him in military school. Unfortunately, this results in tragedy when Neil commits suicide, and his father launches an investigation to have Mr. Keating removed, believing that Keating was the chief instigator, with most of the students rising to their desktops in defense of Keating.

The Hunger Games: Cashmere's actor, Stephanie Schlund, states that the parents of Cashmere and her older brother, Gloss, were extremely hard on them.

Every mother depicted in Stick It was The Agent variation of helicopter parent; and some were a particularly abusive twist on that — more focused on their daughter's gymnastic success than in their happiness or mental well-being.

Literature

In the Dubliners short story "A Mother", the eponymous character behaves more like her daughter's agent than a parent.

Discussed and Played for Laughs at the end of Game Night; while we never see the actual 'parenthood' part, the two main characters are a married couple who have been struggling to conceive a child, in part due to the husband's hang-ups. The two are also intensely competitive tabletop gaming freaks, and at the end when he's ready to accept the responsibilities of fatherhood they spend a few moments delightedly bragging about how their future kid is going to be the most awesome kid in the world, with the clear implication that their future son or daughter is going to have to deal with a couple of these in the future.

In Last Sacrifice, Daniella Ivashkov tries to meddle in her son's Adrian life to resolve one potential problem. When Queen Tatiana Ivashkov, her aunt-by-marriage, is killed at night, Rose Hathaway stands as the most likely suspect. But Rose spend that night with her boyfriend Adrian, providing her with an alibi. Daniella decides that the alibi is not solid enough and Adrian could be accused as an accomplice to murder. So she bribes a janitor to testify that Adrian arrived in Rose's apartment later than he actually did. Providing him with an alibi and incriminating Rose. Daniella does not care that Rose could end up executed for regicide. Her help is not appreciated by her son. Her plan eventually backfires as she is imprisoned for interfering with a murder investigation.

Played for Laughs in The May Donut Knows, the third Spinoff novel from the Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note series, which is set three years after the original series. Aya complained to her sister Nako that their mom wants the former to marry one of the KZ's boys (she's still with them, the viewer considers it Reverse Harem while Nako sees them as her sister's boyfriends, but Aya still thinks they're Just Friends). Mom goes on discussing some of the boys in a completely utilitarian way, stating, for example, Uesuki's genes are worth inheriting, or Kozuka is Nice and is unlikely to cheat. Later that novel mom also wants Nako—11 at the time—to consider dating from her circle of boys but made it clear she won't like Mei.

Moomin Mama and Moomin Papa in The Moomins are an inversion of this. They let their son go comet hunting with only a flask of raspberry juice and a money-grabbing, egotistical mouse kangaroo for company.

Agnes' parents from Run are of the hovering variety, always interfering with Agnes' life out of fear that she'll get hurt, and eventually admitting that deep down they don't think she'd ever be able to leave Mursey after high school. Fortunately, they get better.

Live-Action TV

Richard and Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls are constantly trying to "help" their daughter and granddaughter — or, if you prefer Lorelei's interpretation, control their lives and suppress their free will. They are, in fact, so manipulative that it is often bordering on impossible to believe that they legitimately care at all, and aren't just trying to ensure the outcome that will bring the least disrepute to the family name.

Angela Petrelli of Heroes. Willing to let one son blow up New York so her other son could become President one day. And that's just Season One.

Parental Control was an MTV pseudo-reality show in which parents hated their child's current significant other, and each would each pick out a new date for them to go on in hopes of breaking them up with their current boyfriend/girlfriend.

I'm used to a 1200 mile buffer zone. I can't handle this. Plus I got the dinners, I got the pop-ins. They pop in! It's brutal!

Bunny, the mother of Sex and the City's Charlotte's first husband Trey, who tried to interfere in every decision the couple made, from redecorating their apartment to what kind of mattress they should buy, to snootily declaring, "The MacDougal name will be carried on by sons of your own, not daughters of the South Pacific", regarding the couple's plans to adopt a Chinese baby due to their fertility struggles. This was the last straw for Charlotte, who promptly divorced Trey.

Soaps love this one, to the point of them often being an obstacle that the average Super Couple has to deal with:

One Life to Live's Dorian Lord to downright pathological levels. Low points include creation of a false sexual harassment complaint against Cassie's father-in-law so that Cassie would shun him and pay more attention to her. When Cassie became so upset at learning the truth that she miscarried, she then tried to take over her medical care despite having lost her license years ago, then tried to help Cassie quickly adopt another baby to the point of trying to help Cassie flee the country with the baby when the birth mother changed her mind, trying to bully the girl into handing her child over, demanding that Cassie leave her husband after learning of his emotional affair with Cassie's friend, etc.

All My Children's Adam Chandler loathed his daughter Hayley's boyfriend Brian and pushed her into a relationship with the wealthy Will Cortlandt...who turned her into an alcoholic and tried to rape her. To his credit, despite his disapproval of nearly all her other boyfriends, Adam learned his lesson from this disaster and did his best to not interfere in her life anymore.

Simon's mother wants what's best for him, which manifests as her involving herself in his life and worrying over him more than he would like. They do have a strong relationship otherwise, but Simon wishes she would back off once in a while.

Nadine's mother has been known at times to try and interfere in her life, especially given that she's split up with Nadine's father, which usually just sours things between the two women.

Benjy's mother is a benign example, as it's shown in a side-story that she delights in giving him advice on his love life, much to his embarrassment.

Morgan Fey of Ace Attorney really, really wants her daughter Pearl to be the next Kurain Master. To the point of tricking Pearl into nearly murdering the contender to the position by asking her to channel the vengeful spirit of Morgan's other daughter Dahlia, who would then kill Maya using Pearl's body. It's unclear if Pearl ever really understands what's going on, and given her young age, it's probably better if she doesn't.

Western Animation

In Daria, Helen Morgendorffer constantly tries to feel she is meaningfully engaged with her children when not at work, regardless of whether her daughters want it or not. However, the trope occasionally subverted, with her help being appreciated, whether it is helping Daria with a story project or defending her in a legal matter.

In Sofia the First, royal sorcerer Cedric's parents (also sorcerers) keep an eye on him via a magic portrait of themselves and occasionally teleport to his workshop to give him advice.

Real Life

This is part of the stereotype of the Jewish mother-in-law, who usually dotes on her son but constantly criticizes him and outright loathes her daughter-in-law. God help you if the boy married a gentile.

Of course, the stereotype has spread to Italian mothers (or at least Italian-American) and Greek mothers and mothers in the Deep South... let's just say that the stereotype is universal (whether or not it's Truth in Television depends.)

Stage parents are usually this, getting far more involved in their children's entertainment careers than they are reasonably expected to. Like the job interview example above, there have been child actors who can't get parts solely because writers/directors/casting agents/producers simply don't want to deal with the kid's parents.note This is how Macaulay Culkin's career died; his dad was such an asshole that no one in Hollywood wanted to even be in the same room with him, so they stopped hiring Macaulay.

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